1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, and more particularly, to an image forming apparatus capable of preventing copy failures from occurring without increasing the memory capacity of a page buffer more than required and capable of efficiently producing an image.
2. Description of the Related Art
According to related art, in an image forming apparatus of this type, in order to absorb difference between time to transfer an image data from a hard disk (hereinafter, simply called an “HDD”) and time to print out the image data, one page of the image data to be printed first is transferred to a page buffer, for example, by an electronic sort and after required edit-process, such as image rotating, is performed on the image data, the image data is printed out.
Whereas, normally, since the HDD of this type cannot insure against certainly reading data within a predetermined period due to configuration, reading takes a long time due to a read error.
In this way, in the related art, if the reading takes a long time due to the reading error and the like, the image data miss timing when being printed on a paper. Thus, any of the four colors, YMCK, is lost and there is possibility to output a erroneously-printed paper.
If an amount of data stored in the page buffer is increased to absorb elapse of transfer time due to the error, the above problem can be avoided. However, since high-speed DRAM (dynamic RAM) and the like is usually used for the page buffer, if the capacity of the page buffer is increased in vain, the printing apparatus becomes extremely expensive.